A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 When I was young my Mother tried to introduce us to Religion. The Christian Methodist brand to be exact. I do not know if it was because she believed, I do not think that she did, or that she just thought it would be a good influence on us kids. Probably the latter. Maybe I am wrong. And even then, at that very young age, none of what they were telling us made any sense to me. Not only did it sound ridiculous, there was nothing about it that connected with me at all. And then, I learned to read. And one of the first things that I read, about a zillion times it seems like to me today, was a large book, with simple pictures and words, that recounted the Greek Myths. As stated, I devoured that book over and over again. Not because I believed anything about those stories, because I did not, because they were good stories and gave my imagination things to work with. All of a sudden I had Gods, and Demons, Demi Gods, Heroes, Villains, and a framework within which to lodge all of these thing

 As a child growing up I always felt different. Not like other people. Not even the members of my family. I became a very solitary child. And yet, I always craved people. What a dichotomy. And, as a child who grew up in an addicted household, there were a lot of things going on in my home that no child should have to experience. So I learned how to be a victim. It took me a long time to admit that I had also been a perpetrator. I had done what I had learned. I had hurt people. This is not an excuse. This is a statement of what is so. For years I played the victim. Had not the ability to see that A) Bad things were happening to everyone in my family at one time or another and B) I was not the worst off human being on the planet. and C) I had also done the bad things that I learned. For many years I went through my life in a haze. Anger, Resentment, Shame, Guilt, etc, all stuffed down and away with a lot of really destructive Actions, Attitudes, and Behaviors. And then one day I began to

 While growing up I was a pretty normal kid in some ways. Watched TV, saw the ads, got indoctrinated into the Consumer Society with Brand Awareness. And over the years, through a lot of trials and tribulations, I became a really Self Centered Individual. Nothing special, I was very much like a lot of America's Consumerist Society, I want mine and if I have to step on you for it then so be it. As I have grown older though I began a process of resigning from the Consumerist Society. It is a lengthy, and ongoing, process with a lot of fits and starts. Because, ultimately, we live in this Consumerist Society, so how in the world does one resign from it? Well, I think that in my recovery fellowship I have an answer. Because one of the main pillars in Recovery is Being of Service. Service to the Fellowship, Service to Each Other, and Service to the New People just walking in the door. Like I did once. And in Being of Service to Something or Someone else then we are no longer locked insid

 As a child, really young, I remember when a day was an eternity. And a week, that was just so far away as to be completely unfathomable. Time just seemed to stretch and I had forever and at least a week more. But, as Pink Floyd said in their song Time, "And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you had missed the starting gun". Interesting aside, that album, Dark Side of the Moon, came out when I was ten years old. Everybody who listened to that album really liked the song Money. I, however, instantly gravitated towards Time from the moment I heard it. That song has spoken to me from the beginning and as the years go by my depth of appreciation only gets deeper. For me that was more like 25 years had gone by. I had lost a lot of time in an imagination haze later fueled by a lot of drugs. And I discovered that time is not infinate. At least not mine anyway. As the years go by, and seem to get ever shorter, my notion that time is pr

 = "I am because we are" I was on social media today and I saw the following story: "An anthropologist proposed a game to children in an African tribe. He put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the children whoever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run together like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: 'Ubuntu, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?' Ubuntu in their civilization means: (I am because we are). " And the question, which is so missing to us all, "How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?" I have been studying History for a very long time. Pretty much from when I first learned to read onwards. And my BIGGEST take away from my study of History is that when we are United in a society that does it's best to work for

 I was just reading a peice of Fan Fiction, IE a story written by a fan about an already existing story that takes place in that universe, and starting getting emotional. I was having feelings because I was reading a scene where one of the main charectors was being a kind, loving, and supportive parent to their child. And I did not have that experience for the most part growing up. Today I can recognize that my parents tried the best that they could. They just were not equipped with the tools needed to be that because of their own upbringing. And their parents etc... Yet that acknowedgement does not stop me, from time to time, from wishing that I could change the past and create the growing up that I want. And then I have to practice Acceptance and recognize that I have the past that I have and no other is possible. No matter how much I want it I cannot have it any other way than the way it went. Yet, like most adults in this world, I still find myself trying to change the past. Wishin